No Christian Hates His Brother
1 John 3v15
24th February 2023
We saw last time, in our study of 1 John 3v14, that true Christians, and only true Christians, have agape love. Agape love - the sacrificial love of God - is a gift from God and a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It enables us to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, and others, the way Jesus loves us (though not as well, of course). The opposite of love is, of course, hate. John continues:
1 John 3v15a
Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.
Can a Christian hate his bother? John says "No". We usually think that to hate somebody is to hope they hurt, to want them to suffer, perhaps even to want them to die. Is it possible for a true Christian to want any other human being to suffer? Is it possible to seek revenge if you're a follower of Jesus Christ? I think not.
Do you remember when we studied verse 12, which speaks about the story of when Cain was angry because God had accepted Abel's sacrifice but not his? God said, "Sin wants to have you." I think God was saying to Cain, "In this moment you're angry. Deal with it. Don't let it fester". As Paul says in Ephesians 4v26, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger". We all get annoyed sometimes, but deal with it now. Don't let it grow. Don't let it get hold of you. Don't let it make you the sort of person who wants revenge on anybody, ever, certainly not on your brothers or sisters.
John says anyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer. Not literally, of course, but the attitude, the emotion, the selfishness, that wants to hurt another human being, when it's brought to fulness, results in murder. And even if it doesn't get brought to fulness, it's the same basic attitude as that of a murderer: "I am more important than you. I have the right to judge you. It's for me to punish you, because you are a bad person, or even because you are a good person and I'm feeling rotten because of what you've said or done, or because God has blessed you."
Anyone who hates his brother or sister has that seed within his heart that is the same as the heart of a murder, because to want to damage anybody in any way is to want to kill a little bit of them.
But I think John is saying more than this. In the Bible, to hate a person sometimes means simply to be indifferent to them, to ignore their needs, not to care if they suffer. Again, a heart of total indifference to another person is the heart of a murderer. It says the other person's well-being, his life, is of no value.
John says:
1 John 3v15b
and you know that no murder has eternal life in him.
As we've said before, John speaks in very black and white terms. Every one of us, at some point in our life, has wanted to physically or verbally hurt another person, to "take him down a peg or two". But if we listen to God's word to Cain, if we'll heed Paul's instruction, we'll deal with it now, and let it go. We'll have a heart that forgives, not a heart that resents. We'll have a heart that wants to bless, not a heart that wants to damage.
Am I my brother's keeper? Yes! Am I responsible for your well-being? Yes! are you responsible for mine? Yes! That's often more obvious, and of more practical benefit, if we live in the same town or are members of the same church. But we can support missionaries, for example. Your role and mine is to do our best to build up our brothers and sisters in every way we can, and never to damage them.
This is Christ's heart for you, Isn't it? He wants to build you up, and encourage you, to bless you and protect you and fill your life with good things. If we are Christians, we have Christ's heart towards our sisters and our brothers. And if we don't then, according to verse 15, we do not have eternal life in us. This is serious stuff.
So again, as we said about sin before, if you occasionally get into a negative mindset about someone, that doesn't mean you're not a Christian, but if you let it fester and grow, and become deeply damaging to them and to yourself, then the question is there: are you a Christian, really?
If you're struggling right now because somebody, especially a sister or brother in Christ, has hurt you, then you have my sympathy. We've all had that experience. People who we think love us, have hurt us. People who we think should know better behaved badly sometimes. It happens. I pray for you that God gives you grace to let it go, to forgive, and to keep loving.
When Jesus walked this earth, many people said some very unkind things about Him. He forgave them. Roman soldiers nailed Him to a cross, and He forgave them. The heart of Christ is to forgive, and the Christian heart is also to forgive.
May God purify us by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, and enable us by His mercy, to love everybody and hate nobody, in Jesus's name.